Fast Watches
by tactfully
Summary: It's all his fault. Lily waits for James on their first date...and last, possibly.


She sits and she waits: her legs are parted, she obediently crosses her ankles.

It's funny, she thinks, that she cares what he will think of her. It's funny not because it's obvious that he does, but because two weeks ago she couldn't have cared less. It's funny not because two weeks ago she couldn't have cared less, but because it's this boy for who she is changing.

If he were more romantically inclined, she thinks, maybe she wouldn't have a problem with changing. But he is not one for love letters or quiet smiles - no, they are reserved only for his closest friends, in jest and maybe partially in truth (she can't tell, with him.)

She has spent every night for the past week moaning to her friends. "_Why," _she says, "_does he have to be so... so..." _She can never find quite the right word, with him, and neither can anyone else (she's asked.) _Why does he have to be such a boy_ works well and good with every other boy she's liked, but not him. He's always been a boy, maybe, in enthusiasm and while with his friends - but around his enemies, he's much more.

For years, she was the enemy. And she can't quite change the image of his eyes, hazel and blazing; daring her to throw a hex, to degrade herself to his level. She did, once. She expected him to roar afterwards, live up to the namesake of a true Gryffindor, but instead he only looked at the tentacle growing out of his left hand in interest and smiled at her.

The smile was a cruel smirk but it was a smile nevertheless, and she thinks that's maybe the moment when she first fell for him, a little bit.

_"Thanks,"_ he had said, loudly, as usual, "_that felt good, didn't it? It feels great for me, anyway. Now bugger off to the Library."_

He had walked away with his arm slung over his not-quite-brother's shoulder (the two had their heads bent inwards, and they were engaged in a soft conversation that no outside ears would ever hear.) A third member of their group was looking back over his shoulder at her, almost apologetically. But he was a boy, and more importantly one of _them_, and to her that was all the evidence in the world. The fourth member of the group was staring into the distance, as if anxious to get out of their company but staying, anyway, for reasons that he couldn't quite comprehend and maybe didn't _want_ to. As she huffed a final time, slung her bookbag over her shoulder and followed them down the hallway, she understood more than anyone else (she thinks) what it felt like.

But that, she reckons, isn't what made her fall for him, if she's fallen for him at all. Which she shouldn't have, because while she's certainly seen enough passion in him to burn their school to the ground, passion doesn't make love and a boy like him does not win over girls like her with words that are nothing pretending to be everything, or maybe the other way around (she can never tell.) No, there are definitely many other incidents, only she can't remember them at the drop of a hat or the bat of an eyelash and she'd be mad if she gave up a day trying to remember _when she fell for him_ - which she hasn't, not really.

"Maybe,"she murmurs to herself and attracts a strange look from a girl at a nearby table, "maybe I should ask someone." Only who? Her friends have all given their opinions (consisting mainly of _he's an arrogant prat who deserves to see the Grim_ and _but only if he'd look good as a corpse_) and that isn't something that she wants to go over again if she can help it.

"Are you sure he's coming?" Madam Rosmerta asks as she walks past. She forces a tight-lipped smile up at the beautiful barmaid who she's never really liked. This incident is only serving to make her dislike stronger. "I've seen girls wait around for hours, I have, all for a bloke who didn't show up in the end-"

"Thanks," she cuts her off, and Rosmerta looks at her, her own lips tightening. "But he's coming."

The threat in that statement remains unspoken, which is a good thing, because she isn't quite sure who, exactly, she's threatening.

"Alright," the older woman says with a sigh, "but let me get you a Butterbeer. It'll cost, mind." Rosmerta bustles off without another word, leaving her to uncross her ankles and scowl out the nearby window. He should've turned up two minutes ago, according to her watch, and it's his fault that she's been waiting around for half an hour.

His fault because he always goes down to Hogsmeade early, he and his friends; they're always the first in line, and she's always in second, maybe, or twentieth, and she's always found their footprints in the snow fascinating to look at as she rides down in a carriage. (They never bother to claim one, always preferring to sprint off.) It's his fault because he's always early for everything except lessons and meals and things when dramatic entrances are important, and so she expected that she'd be early for their _date_.

"Outing," she says, and Rosmerta flashes her a sympathetic look as she sets the bottle of butterbeer down in front of her, "you're meeting for a drink. There's nothing special about that."

Only there is, and she knows it, and the rest of the school knows it. It's special because it's _them_ who are meeting; he who has yelled a request for companionship at her at least once a month for the past two years, and she who has denied the requests with enough anger to send Dumbledore asking about for a hankerchief (only probably not, because this is _Dumbledore_, after all.)

She can see a few students with cameras crowded outside the window, wanting proof and wanting sickles, but she ignores them in favour of gulping down the warm liquid in front of her. It's not her fault they can't mind their own business, after all, and it's definitely not her fault that they're probably mixing old rumours in hope of setting a new one ablaze - it's _his_, because he's late and he's probably with his friends and there's going to be news of a raging love affair between the four (or two, or three, maybe, depending on who starts the rumour and their level of Teenage Girl Fantasy capasity) within the hour.

"Sod it," she declares, and scrapes back her chair, ignoring the angry looks from fellow students and villagers. She slings her bookbag over her shoulder, wonders briefly why she didn't take out her Transfiguration textbook that she brought as a just-in-case, sends a dirty look towards the half-empty bottle of Butterbeer and walks out of the bar in a huff.

Two minutes later, James Potter arrives at _the Three Broomsticks._

Five minutes after that, he leaves.

**XXXxXXXxXXX**

**I was listening to _I Don't Want to Wait_ and this is what followed. Most of the resemblances end at the title. Please be aware that I do not own the Harry Potter cast (including locations, people, etc.) nor the song previously mentioned. I do not own the potential over-usage of the world 'bloke' in order to make it sound vaguely British, because it's been done to a far worse extent by others years before the idea even crept into my mind.**

**Reviews would be nice; feedback in general is loved. Tell me how I can improve.**

**The title (_Fast Watches_) is very straight-forward, has everything to do with the text but is never actually mentioned. So, this is for those out there who didn't actually get that. In any case, I've lost every watch I've ever owned and the one that hasn't been lost has run out of batteries and I can't be bothered to fix it.**

Tactfully.


End file.
